The Tragedy of His Destination
by Bara Husband
Summary: Time stops for no living man, but repeats endlessly for the dead. DannyxVlad. Rating subject to increase.
1. Prologue

Years on Years pass. Danny graduates high school, he and Sam go to different Universities. He gets his Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then his Master's. Nasa extends their offer- they do not need anymore Astronauts this year, but scientists are welcome by the dozens. He accepts, asks to be placed in the closest facility to Amity Park. It is in Wisconsin. Sam and Tuck ask if he wants help house hunting. The realtor that helped them find their place is such a lovely lady, (and single, too, Tucker points out before Sam jabs him sharply in the ribs.) He declines.

They gave him Vlad's castle about a month after the incident. Danny had assumed that the GIW would have demolished the damn thing, but apparently Vlad's will had put it into Danny's hands, along with his entire fortune, to the great surprise of the Fentons. They'd taken the money and put it towards repairs and Danny's college fund (not that he'd needed one, by that point, you wouldn't believe the number of scholarships that opened up that year for half ghosts.) He hasn't stepped foot into the castle since.

–

"Danny, are you sure?" Jazz says wearily, helping him pack up his books and his ship models. "Its not like money is a problem, right? I mean,"

"Jazz, calm down. It's just a house." Danny looks at her seriously, and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Well, its a castle, but"

"Why, though? You don't have to. You could live pretty much anywhere near an observatory, couldn't you? Why there?"

"It's already there. It's pretty far off from people, but not totally secluded. I kind of, I like it." He shrugs, and that's the end of that conversation.

–

It has a lab. Adequate room for his equipment and small library. A bit worn around the corners but, it is a castle, and it will do. Vlad's equipment, for the most part, still works. Everything but the ghost portal. Its odd, but his parent's portal has been acting odd these days, too. Ghost come out, but nothing can get in.

He likes that people here do not know him. Most people don't recognize his face, actually. They expect a thirty-something year old, handsome and just starting to wear from the troubles of adulthood.

They never suspect a boy who, generously, looks not a day past eighteen.

–

His family will not visit him there. They love him, and respect that he is an adult that can make his own choices, but they will not stay under that roof. He shows up for every Holiday and twice in the Summer.

–

Thanksgiving, when Maddie and Jack are passed out and the entire house is dead silent, Jazz sneaks to the roof to bring Danny coffee. He's been up for hours, soundless, almost invisible. Watching lights flicker in the sky. She remembers spaceships and astronauts and star charts floating through his room in their childhood, his eyes alight with wonder and curiosity.

Both are absent on his face. Instead of marveling, he is scowling deep into the darkness, searching. She peeks over his shoulder- there's a notebook scrawled over and over with numbers and equations she doesn't understand. Its not a surprise, she stopped being able to help him with schoolwork his junior year of college. A younger her would poke and prod and demand but she has not seen him in so long- she doesn't even know if this is strange behavior or not.

"Hey," she says, softly. "Cold?"

"A little." he says, and takes the cup graciously. "Thanks, Jazz."

"There's actually leftovers, for once," she turns to leave again, "If you're still hungry. You didn't eat much."

"Thanks, Jazz." He repeats, and goes back to scribbling, frowning at the book, then again, frowning at the sky.

–

The following Monday he returns home. He drags himself to the bathroom, draws a hot bath, and falls asleep. He doesn't wake up until much later, freezing and pruny. He drains the tub and starts up a hot shower to warm himself up again, puts on a clean set of pajamas, and wanders about the house, unable to sleep.

He peaks through his journal a bit. He remembers the look on Jazz's face, peaking over him curiously. He knows she can't read it, and that she doesn't know what it means, but he's still embarrassed. Its not like, he's planning to go out that far into space, where Vlad would be by now if he were still out there, just that- he's curious, is all. Vlad is probably dead, anyway. No, not probably. Definitely. No human could survive that. He tells himself that twice, conveniently ignoring his reflection, almost ten years too young.

It's not that he misses Vlad or anything stupid like that- his life is much more calm now than it was at fourteen, running and dodging between keeping ghosts from destroying his town, foiling evil billionaire halfa's rotten plans, keeping up a 2.0 GPA. Life's not so devastating anymore. Not so urgent. He likes it that way, his peace and freedom and calm.

But sometimes he gets lonely. He wonders sometimes that maybe it's the castle- or not really leaving to go anywhere but the observatory—or the plain solid lack of any sort of company, human, ghost, or otherwise, that makes him feel this way. Some nights he lays awake in his bead, a weight in the pit of his stomach, that knows it is not. Not entirely.

He closes his journal, but instead of tossing it onto the nearest flat surface, decides to take it all the way back to the lab, to put it in it's proper place.

His feet pad along the cold linoleum, and he swears at himself for forgetting socks or slippers. On the balls of his feet, he moves towards the bookshelves and slides the moleskin exactly in its place among the others. He turns, ready to leave, but the faintest glint of something off a beaker catches his eye. He turns slowly, and stumbles back a few steps.

The Portal is on, and it's doors are wide open.

–


	2. Zero Hour

Zero Hour

_ Vlad does not awake slowly, but instead, all at once, a sharp rod of pain jamming itself up his spine and through his neck. He convulses wildly, unable to move his hands, flailing helplessly like an injured animal. He realizes dimly, beyond the pain, the feel of latex hands over him, pinning him down, and bright white light. His head is empty and raw and his face stings and burns like its falling off- the more it tenses the worse it gets, but he can't stop grimacing, because the pain oh god, kill him, end it- shoots up again and again between different limbs, sharp and hot and unholy. Everything is white. He hopes that he is dying. _

_ White turns silver and black, then something pierces the skin of his back and sinks in dull and sharp at once, and he can feel it scrape against the bones of his spine, and then his body feels like its disappearing and honestly he is too exhausted for any of this, and his eyes fall shut as his body goes limp against the gurney. _

–

He dreams about lightning storms. A great flaming serpent in his body wraps itself around his bones and pushes itself against his skin to escape, and as it tears through his ribcage he sees the his heart pumping blood in his own hand, black and sticky with a sheen like oil, and spilling everywhere, shiny and deep and coppery and its too hot and he's burning burning burning.

–

_ He half-wakes four more times, a different part of him blistering and peeling each instance. His face always hurts, like the skin is melting there. He hears a voice whisper about scars and it pities him, it pities him so much and he wants to reach up to that voice and ask for help because he is terrified and it hurts oh please-_

_ The next time he wakes up, he feels sand in his mouth, and cannot move. His eyelids flutter, only half opening, and he can see bone-white machines all stacked around him, but everything else is blurry and too far away. He thinks he sees mice crawling up from the walls and into the ceiling. Small and white like the lab rats Jack brings into the dorm room when it rains. _

_ "They're scared of the Lightning, Vladdie." He says solemnly, and Vlad sees him like a ghost at his bedside. "They're just scared," when he closes his eyes again, he can hear Jack humming lullabies. His voice is cracking and out of tune, but it still sends him back to sleep. _

_ He does not wake up again for six more months. _

**(September 17****th****, 2004) **

The night before, Vlad wakes with a start. A second passes by, and he hears the rain roll across his window. Lightning flashes outside, and the whole of his room is lit up white (like heat, like pain sharp and unholy.) His face burns, and he presses the palms of his hands into his closed eyes. Little sparks of light jump in the corners of his vision, like a migraine. He digs his arms into his pillows and forcefully rolls himself over, away from the window and towards the door.

Nerves. That's all it is, nerves. His dreams don't mean anything aside from anxiousness. He needs his sleep. Tomorrow means too much. He needs his sleep.

Maddie is coming.

His body does not listen. It trembles and sweats and feels altogether weak. He attempts to extricate himself from the bed, but his legs are tethered down and for a moment he panics- and then realizes they are caught in the sheets.

Absolutely ridiculous. He's being- he isn't a _child, _blast it, he just-

He takes a deep breath. Anger always gets the best of him. Turns him into a screaming infant, makes him absolutely useless. He unwinds the sheets from his legs and swings them over the edge of the bed, just as lightning strikes again and a wave of nausea comes upon him.

He washes his face, head bowed over the sink, with the hottest water he can stand. The steam makes his head feel softer, easier, and he heads into the basement lab, where there are no windows and he cannot hear the thunder.

When he finally finds a couch to sleep on, he does not dream, but he imagines that a pair of wide green eyes watch him drift into darkness.

Author's Note:

The Chapters to come will begin to get longer eventually, when other characters like Dani and Val and Sam and Tucker and the Fentons begin to play bigger parts. I'm just trying to not drag on too much with the introduction. I was agonizing for awhile on how to make this longer without revealing too much and I just decided to start posting it as it comes even if that means in short sporadic bursts. Sorry this one took so long, the next one should be up much more quickly!


	3. First Hour

**First Hour**

The portal glows green; and he wonders if its the ectoplasm in his blood that makes his heart beat so much faster; reaching and pulling out of him to go back to where it came from.

He knows that there is no reason the portal should be on. He has not touched it, except to monitor its condition (and whether or not it would explode on him if he ignored it and its filtration system). No one has been in Vlad's- in _his _castle since he's moved in. Manufactured portals do not open on their own. Doors stay closed when they're locked unless they are opened from the inside.

Danny knows all this, and still, the only thing he can think of is to plunge into the vortex head first, as fast as his body can fly.

His first breath is like the combustion-fire of an engine; but cold and sharper. The air fills his lungs, and his heart, and his limbs down to his toes; blurred together and dragging behind him like the tail of a comet.

He has missed this, oh god, it sings in him: he's _missed_ this, this chill and all over-glow. He can feel the ectoplasm in his bones and blood, bleeding a kind of cold, white energy through his skin, humming and tingling and free.

In his nostalgia he recalls all different memories with no place or meaning; the damp wild of skulkers island, the sleek cold white of the Far Frozen.. Unbidden comes the memory of a smell, of metal and oil and dust, and the sound of ten thousand hands all softly tick tick ticking at once.

A nagging voice in the back of his mind hisses and spits like a machine on the verge of catastrophic meltdown. _Come on Fenton, use your head. You haven't been here in ten years and suddenly the portal just invites you in? Something's up. Stop dicking around._

He tries to concentrate. He can see the portal, though not as well as he can feel it; a tiny pin prick of humanity, a beacon reaching straight into his heart pumping ectoplasm through his veins.

(He remembers Frostbite chuckling deeply once, large teeth clacking and knocking lightly against each other, "Of course I knew it was you, My Lord; the dead have no pulse.")

But this ectoplasm around him is moving in steady increments, collecting quietly behind him, and the harder he tries to focus the louder it sounds. It slides against his temples, ghosts over his shoulder, steady and solid: A pulse.

_Thump._

_ Thump. _

_ Thump._

And then;

_Tic._

_ Tic._

_ Tic._

_ (The smell of metal and oil and dust.)_

He opens his eyes (can't remember when he closed them) to see a dark tower standing stark against the green, bowing over him in all its crooked glory.

–

He doesn't knock or ring the gaudy, oversized doorbell (he made that mistake once, yanked the rope and let a booming church bell ring so loud he thought the vibration would stop his heart) before he opens the door. The tower welcomes him the way it always has, with the sound thousands upon thousands of unseen clocks ticking all in time, a sound like crickets or the marching feet of a distant army. (In the back of his mind, it reminds him of villainous laughter, steady and secret.)

"Clockwork?" He calls, stepping into the darkness. It hangs heavy with a thick scent like smoke and dust, and clings to his lungs when he breathes. He moves forward by the light of his palm; shadows writhe across parts of clocks he does not know the name of. Something creeps up his spine like fear (soft like mold, cold like water) and he can feel his breath turn sharp in his lungs; shards of ectoplasm catching the walls of his throat. (He remembers this feeling, in his bed, in his own home, imagining eyes peering at him from behind, flashing back and forth, two different kinds of red.)

He trips and cusses when he pitches forward onto cold stone. He's being ridiculous, and he knows it, but for all that he misses this place he cannot quite stand it, all alone, and really the only thing he wants to do is go home and crawl into his bed and pretend to sleep until sunlight warm and holy chases this awful coldness away. (He searches for it, the tiny pinprick in his chest attached to home, but his heart is beating too quickly to concentrate.)

"I've been waiting for you, Danny-boy." A voice hisses, (from the corners of his mind, white firelight dancing across green and black and—_**red**_)"It's about time you showed up."

_White teeth and white hair and skin dead and sea foam green; the color of hospital tile; the color of cloth Sam and Tuck hide under, rotting in their beds because Danny cannot fix them-_

_ Eyes burning red and glassy in a face he sees every morning, every time he washes his hands (blood that is not there, blood that still runs freely in the veins of people who are very much alive.)_

"Don't look so stunned," his lips curl like smoke into a grin, "I know you didn't think that thermos could hold me forever."

"You," Danny trembles, "_don't exist. _Clockwork-"

"Lied to you." Dan snarls.

"Where is he?"

"Dead." Danny's face goes pale, and he laughs. "Has been as long as I've known him."

Dan takes a step forward and Danny flinches, as though the fire burns him. "Oh _quit _your whimpering. I'm not going to kill you, _Fenton."_

The first thought in his head is terror, (the aftermath of an explosion, he cannot even see their faces, cannot recognize them at all) and every possible scenario (clockwork is dead, cold green ectoplasm leaking from his mouth) chimes like fragments of broken glass in his mind. (_"Some things my boy, are better left unsaid."_)

_ "No, _you _won't." _Danny growls, and the ice inside him shatters, a hot putrid burning beneath. His anger is an organ, heavy and thick, oozing heat and malice. He wants to kill this- _thing;_ wants to wrap his hands around a pale green throat and squeeze until his fingers meet his thumbs, until those glassy eyes turn back in their head . His body acts before his mind and his fist goes flying towards a shiny row of teeth, but Dan twists behind him, _(forked tongue and pointed teeth he's a snake, a viper going to rip out his throat_) and shoves his face down into the floor.

"Ah, ah, Danny boy. This is not how we play the game." Danny thrashes like a wild animal, Dan drives a hard knee into his back and grabs him by the hair. "Let's be civil, shall we?"

Danny spits in his face.

Dan's eyes burn white-hot, and his grip tightens and Danny can taste copper and ectoplasm dripping from his lip, and in the silence he can hear it plip plipping onto the floor below. He waits for the next blow- as soon as Dan leans back to punch him he's going to spin around and kick the living shit out of him, he's going to ram an ectoplasmic energy charge so far down this ghost's throat he'll-

Something cold pierces his back and in a split second he knows that it's Dan's hand. _Inside _of him, ghosting over his innards- up and into his heart, oh god, Dan is going to rip the heart right out of his chest, he's going to watch Danny bleed out all over this floor-

Except, he doesn't. As quick as he reaches in, he's come back out, and he rolls off of Danny with a grunt, yanking him back up alongside him. Danny stares at him wearily, and Dan smiles back like a child with a secret.

"Don't look at me like that. I told you I wasn't going to kill you."

"No, just my family and friends, right?"

"Don't be a dickhead. _You're _going to do that. I'm going to watch."

Danny blasts him in the gut.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Dan growls, plummeting into the wall. "Can't you take a fucking joke?!"

"What's the matter, Phantom?" Danny snarls back. "Can't you take a fucking hit?"

Dan bites back his retort, showing an amazing amount of restraint- that is, for him, any at all. He marches past Danny, (cape billowing, something in his mind sees a flash red that is not there.)

Something in that thought strikes Danny in the pit of his stomach.

"Vlad is dead," he says (not trembling. There is no doubt in these words. He knows it. He's known it for years.) "Vlad is dead, I'm- I'm five years older than you- you can't _exist. _Vlad is_ dead. _His corpse is floating somewhere between Mars and the asteroid belt."

"Poor old boy," Dan drawls. "And I wasn't even invited to the funeral."

_There wasn't one, _Danny does not say.

"You can't exist." Danny insists, "Not without both of us."

"Wrong-o! Haha!" Dan cackles, standing in front of an open portal. "Come on, take a look." Danny, trying to retain what little dignity he has, stands firmly in the corner, eyes shifting between Dan and the door.

"Oh what, like you're really going to _run?_" Dan snarls, and grabs him by the scruff of his neck, dragging him in front of the portal. "Just _look, _and stop being a little shit. I'm trying to be civil."

"Don't _fucking _touch me!" Danny snarls (a wild animal). "Don't– you lay one– not _one __**FUCKING **_hand on me!"

Dan's eyes go dark, the color of dried blood, a mad color like anger harbored and he—smiles.

"Fine." He says, teeth wide and white (fangs, not a vampire but a snake) and he snaps his fingers.

Danny's world goes dark.

–

"Danny," Sam is crying, and he feels awful. Sam looks awful when she cries. "Danny oh, I'm so sorry, I'm, I didn't mean to do this to you."

He feels that his heart is not- not breaking, but it quivers, a little coldly in his chest. She reaches out for his hand- (Better, this is better, he was afraid she was going to kiss him. That always made things awkward, didn't it? He's so stupid and fumbling and young.) and places his ring there, _wes _cleary visible in the soft light of his porch.

"After everything I put you through-" He wants to hold her, wants to keep her in his arms (who cares that they've kissed only kissed a few times, and never had sex? It's no one's business, and they mean more to each other than that. They're in love. They are. Never-leave-me-alone, never-stray-never-look-away-from-me warm and soft and simple love.) "-Danny, I'm sorry, I can't do this. I love you, but not- not the way I thought."

Someone yells in the back of his mind, (don't leave me, god, please don't leave me, we're in love, don't be cruel we're in _love) _and again the world goes dark, and the ground is ripped from beneath him.

–

He's watching himself, now, through a glass window, clutching onto a small shivering form-

"Don't leave me!" He's screaming, but that can't be him, he's at this window, not-

"Dani! Dani, _please!" _There is ectoplasm everywhere, glowing unnaturally bright, warm and sticky. He could be holding a heart. (He is, _he is, _holding an entire chunk of it, dripping wet flesh in his arms, it makes him sick) "Dani, oh god, someone-"

There is a flash of light, and the blood turns red, and it pours and pours, slipping through his fingertips.

And he closes his eyes and begs for the earth to pull him away.

–

Eyes green and shifting and endless in a shadow, and she leans over to whisper in his ear, "Pathetic," and it rings in his head, over and over, like pieces of broken glass chiming against each other "you're going to kill them, you know, you're going to bite off more than you can chew and you're going to kill them all"

–

He opens his eyes. They are dead. (the aftermath of an explosion, acid black and smokey; everything is gone, ash on the lashes of his eyes, on the tips of his fingers, the back of his throat.) (This is his _heart._)

–

"Pleasant memories?" Dan asks lightly, standing over Danny as he sicks up over himself, on Clockwork's stone floor.

"What-" Danny chokes between bile and tears, "what did you _do?!"_

"Fancy little things, these medallions," Dan says, swinging one around his finger. "They can be programmed to do all sorts of things."

"_What did you do?!" _Danny hisses again, his voice small and pathetic.

"I only sent you back in time for a little bit." Dan says softly. (Like mold) "Figured you might need a little practice before the big jump." Danny coughs and gags some more.

"What- the fuck are you- talking about?"

"See, I guess you could say that I'm... a man of opportunity." Dan tilts his head to the side. "And my window is about to close."

"_Fuck you!" _Danny gathers himself. "I'm not- not fucking helping you! You sick-"

"No, I didn't _think _you would. So come look." Dan says, turned to the portal. Danny's eyes glance traitorously at it.

He sees- another death. Not the bloody, violent sort, he has come to expect but the soft quiet death of an old man in his bed. There are no machines around him, only pale pink walls (a hideous color, that) and a few young people crying at his bedside, but he's soft and wrinkled and absolutely calm. A kind of death that is more like sleep than pain. And Danny can see wrinkles in his face, can see callouses in his palms and can almost feel the arthritis pulsing in his wrists and he can feel the bitter sour of bile at the back of his throat because- he knows this is not real, it can't be-

He still looks like a boy. Thirty years old and not a wrinkle, or a

"Not exactly my cup of tea," Dan whispers behind him, "But its a bit prettier sight than some."

"How-," Danny says, soft, trying to pull himself away, "_no, _you can't- do that,"

"I can, actually. Nifty little thing," Dan snaps and Danny can feel a pull in his chest, winding round and round it like twine; and his bones ache, sliding against muscle twisting and- "There."

Danny opens his eyes again and there, shadows under his eyes. A little taller, a little wider, a bit shaggy but _there, _wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and he thinks he might weep at the sight of them.

Dan smacks him open palmed in the chest, and his body grows soft and thin and young again.

" All I'm asking is you go back once, and keep him from flying off into his doom." Dan whispers above him. The words are sweet (sickly sweet) and Danny can see a forked tongue darting out of his mouth. (a serpent, who lies and lies and offers him apples)

"_No." _Danny says. "I'm not going to do this. Why are you even _asking _me, you could, you've pretended to be me before, you want something else, you're-"

Dan is livid, eyes glowing white hot and teeth barred sharp in a thousand needle rows.

"You can't leave," Danny says, his eyes searching for the door again, "you can't, because you don't exist out there, and- and no one else knows how to get here but me and the observers, and you- you're-"

And Dan snaps again, and Danny's head spins and spins and falls.

–

He wakes up just outside a hospital room, sickly green and blue. Some one inside is crying, a voice whispy and reedy and thin, sobbing out her heart.

"Tucker," she wails, clutching onto small children and young people (that are older than he is, older than he'll ever be.) "Tuck, you can't _do _this to me, damn it, damn-" and her pale deep eyes catch him, slowly sinking out of the room and she lets out a furious scream, (like an animal pent up for years and years, starved and blind and terrified.)

"_You!" _She points a long black nail at him, "You come _now?! _He wrote you- a thousand letters, he wrote, I wrote you-" she's choking and sobbing and in all her frail madness is- absolutely petrifying. _"_You- Get out! He's dead, damn you, get _**out! Get out!" **_

Danny scrambles from the room, runs down the corridor, feet pounding uneven against tile that becomes soft until it gives way completely.

–

He runs into another woman dressed in black, red hair parted neatly in a field of green and sunlight- oh thank god, thank god it's Jazz, nearly young and soft as he is-

"Jazz-," and she spins around to see him, her eyes, (emerald) look at him with pity (emerald, not turqoise, and her nose is too narrow,) and pats his hand.

"Uncle Danny," she looks down at him. "It's me, Hannah. Remember? Great Grandma passed away last year," and his throat tightens. "Uncle-" He moves back away from this stranger and his leg hits something solid, and he turns to see rows upon rows of stone, mossy and crooked like the rotting teeth of a man about to swallow him whole.

(He thinks this with almost hope, and the ground concedes.)

–

"That is your future, you big dumb _fuck." _Dan spits, striding towards him, (every step is a memory pounding against his temple. Eyes sunken in and teeth gone missing and folds of skin like tissue paper. ) (None of this is his.) "You get _nothing._ Oh, strike that," Dan hisses, close to his ear, "You get _corpses._"

"Stop-" Danny pleads, but his voice does not even reach his own ears.

"They'll pile up around you, and time will go faster and faster and you won't remember any of them. You won't remember anyone. They'll be like toys you lost when you were a boy. And you'll just, exist. On and on and fucking _on." _

_ Danny is twenty two years old, and he looks like a fucking boy, and whole world eats it up, "Boy Hero, Boy Hero" all over the god damned chronicle, and he's got a gun in his hand, and he shoots and shoots and shoots and goes intangible every time, until the landlady comes ("I don't give a damn if you saved the world you- stupid fucking kid you're putting holes in my fucking wall!") (His favorite landlady, to be perfectly honest.)_

"How long do you really think it'll be before you turn into me regardless of that corpse up there in space?"

Danny lays curled on the floor, forehead cool against the concrete. The room spins and spins so he does not look up.

_ "Fine," _he says, choking on the word.

–


	4. Second Hour (Part I)

_Reaching through the space between_**_  
_**_Your universe and mine_**_  
_**_A warm light shines_**_  
_**_And will until all breath and sigh_**_  
_**_Expend, expend_

_-The Diamond (My Brightest Diamond)_

* * *

**(August 14, 1982)**

On his sixteenth birthday, there is a Gala, held in his uncle's mansion. Music floats softly between idle, pleasant conversation. The room is gold and white soft around the edges, crystals clink and people laugh and every immaculate spot in the room is glittering, fragile elegance.

Vlad thinks he might be sick.

His eyes hurt from looking at this mess, he feels a headache touch the back of his skull, (it is white like a migraine, white like wine, like diamonds and pearls.) His throat hurts and his lips are dry and his suit is too hot and _blast _that _damned _string quartet he is going to smash a cello into a viola if they play one more goddamned trot.

The Drunken Mass of Money doesn't seem to mind (he capitalizes the words in his mind so he can find them again when Jack brings him up to the rooftop of his apartments. He could scream all night and never get this white out of his mouth). They laugh and buzz and ring, (crystal clinking, champagne spilling, laughter that is polished and polite. )

He wishes for a bit to drink. Wishes for Jack-Damn-It-All-To-Hell-Fenton to hurry his lazy end and Pinto before he cracks a champagne glass over the head of one of the girls are giggling at him from the corner (wretched things in pastel colors and fortunes wrapped around their necks tight enough to strangle.) His suit is too tight. Someone is clutching his arm.

"Oh don't look so _dour, _Vladimir!" the words slosh out of his Aunt Matilde's mouth, wet and one after another. She smells like something stronger than champagne. "It's a _party, _boy. And where is your date, _hmmm? _Chatting up some other stud, no _doubt!" _Vlad is already cringing before her voice rings out, "Oh, _Pamela!"_

(Jack-Fuck-My-Life-Sideways-Fenton, he's going to put a knuckle in his eye if he doesn't hurry. He swears to God.)

Pamela Manson emerges, not from the pack of giggling nitwits in the corner, but from the old crones hovering by the wine. Her neat red hair is pulled away from her face, and she smiles dazzlingly, fine white teeth all perfectly straight (they were crooked in grade school, too many for her small mouth, and they called her rabbit-tooth until she cried.) Her hands (gloved, white) reach out for his arm (her dress is also white) too quickly for him to flee (even her god damned necklace is white, fucking pearls, Pamela Fucking Manson. He's going to have an aneurism. )

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Aguillard," she says, her voice a hazy sort of soft. She offers her hand. "It is such a kind sight to see you."

"Oh, you _are _such a _dear!" _Aunt Matilde says, flecks of spittle landing on her exposed bosom. Vlad's snarl threatens to break into a snort when Pamela's hand is pushed away and her face is pressed into the woman's second quivering chin. "_Darling_ girl, you are." The woman lets go of Pamela, who pulls away and only let's a flash of disgust swipe across her face.

Aunt Matilde points a finger to say something, wobbles this way and that (like a tower high and proud and rotting in its foundation) and leaves with a rocking laugh that makes Vlad wonder if she'll make it back to the open bar still on her feet.

"Your Aunt is _disgusting," _Pamela snarls when the woman is out of earshot.

"And you are a right shining beauty in the rough, aren't you?" Vlad snaps back.

"Shut your mouth and ask me to dance, your uncle is watching."

"And why _should _I?"

"Because if you don't I'll tell them that Jack Fenton is on his way to crash this party." She turns a little ways and jabs her elbow between his ribs.

With a grunt he says, "_Fine."_

The song that plays is winding and cold and serious, and reminds him something of his grandmother. (He does not remember much of her, an old Russian woman, with fingers that looked like his after a bath, and a voice that sang raspy words in an accent too thick to understand.)

They take hands and swirl about the floor, precise and calculated (around and around, like the gears of a machine; the kind of carnival ride that would make Vlad sick to his stomach.) Pamela stares out over his shoulder into the crowd, pretending that she is too shy to look Vlad in the eye. Vlad keeps his eyes focused on her hairpin. (A bundle of porcelain jasmine flowers.) His head pounds on and on, and he thinks about how many ways he might trip Pamela without anyone realizing he'd done so. (This song does not help, winding about and warbling; it is stretching out his last bit of patience.)

They do not speak for any amount of time.

The Chandeliers begin to shake and chime against one another. The music halts as the doors in the foyer begin to shake violently, and winds beat on the windows (angry and demanding and colder than winter concrete.)

Vlad, for once, hopes that it is not Jack-could-you-be-a-little-less-fucking-obvious-Fenton.

A flash of white bleaches through the room with a great thundering crash and leaves it in the chaos of complete darkness. He hears several of his aunts gasp when the door blows open, a gust of cold wind and rain cutting sharply into the crowd. Pamela releases him from her death grip and flees to the back of the room.

"Don't ya worry there, folks!" His uncle says over the din, Wisconsinite accent sharp and deliriously chipper. "We've got ourselves a back up generator. It'll kick in any minute." and like clockwork, the lights blink on.

It is, to Vlad's great relief and terror, _not _Jack Fenton.

There is a boy, standing at the door, with wild wet hair that sticks out in every ridiculous (terrifying) direction. His eyes are wide and awful and burning (like hot coal, like the sort of fire that bleeds darkness into the sky for days), and his mouth is twisted unpleasantly, and he is staring straight at Vlad.

"_You," _he says, striding over and leaving no more than a puddle of water and scared house guests in his wake. "_**You.**_"

Vlad opens and closes his mouth several times, and waits for someone to step between him and this soaked-wet dark beast of a boy, but everyone in the room is pressed against its corners, silent as death. (he thinks of a light that disperses cockroaches)

"You _mother fucker," _The boy hisses, grabbing him by the collar. Vlad's heart has stopped and jammed into his throat. His lungs are covered in ash and soot.

"You goddamned- fucking _**son of a bitch!" **_And then Vlad sees him reel his fist back, and all the world goes white.

* * *

The rattling of Jack's Pinto wakes him with a start, scream strangled in his throat.

His senses come to him one at a time. He is cold, and stiff- his neck hurts. His head, too, and his eye pulses incessantly. It is tender to the touch. He is in the dark, save for a few glowing pinpoints of light across the dashboard. Jack's dashboard. In Jack's Pinto. He relaxes instantly.

"Well hello there, sleeping beauty." Jack says, looking cartoonishly enormous in the tiny driver's seat. His hair brushes against the ceiling and if his arm were not sticking out of the window, he simply would not fit.

"What- where-?" Vlad is squinting at the clock on the radio. It's only a quarter past nine.

"I dunno what happened, V-man." Jack shrugs, turning up the volume on the radio now that Vlad is awake. "I got to your party and snuck in through the back, like you said, 'cept nobody seemed like they were having fun, and I mean, like- even less fun than usual, and I saw Pam come round the corner and she told me you were passed out like a fairy princess in the bathroom." Jack laughs. "And you totally were! With a shiner too, man! What'd you do, insult Thurston?"

"_No." _Vlad snorts. He looks into Jack's visor mirror and cringes. It _is _quite an ugly bruise, painted over his puffed eye dark purple and red. "I-" the words catch in his throat. _"-_I got into a fight with a cousin." He does not know why he lies, but the image of a young boy (dripping wet and eyes burning) terrifies him and he- he knows that Jack would laugh. Because it is ridiculous. "The spoiled little cad was bragging about his father's yacht and when I told him to stuff it, he called my mother a- he called her something awful." He hates lying to Jack, about anything. He does not do it often. (White flashes against the back of his skull.)

"I hoped he walked away with more than a black eye."

"Who said he walked away?" and Jack laughs and claps him on the back. They drive a little more ways, and Jack turns a corner.

Vlad tries to forget about the boy. (Burning, like a fire. Like ink spilled across white silk, and terrifying. Bleeding _terrifying.) _

"I hate parties like that. I hate _people _like that." He says, after awhile. "They'll be licking my boots, someday. All of them, like the _animals _they are."

"Uh, that's kinda harsh."

"They're trying to marry me off to _Pamela Manson, _Jack."

"Oh," Jack says, and Vlad rolls his eyes.

"I'm never going to be like that." he insists. "_Never." _

"Really? I thought you liked being rich and fancy pants," Jack glances at him. "Remember? You're gonna cure cancer and like, the cold and stuff and live in a big mansion and have a pharmacy named after you."

"Because I _earned _it," Vlad crosses his arms. His fingernails leave little moon-shaped impressions in his skin. "Not because my great-great uncle made a big enough fortune to drink my life away with no consequence. _Those _people don't deserve- you should see them, Jack! It's disgusting! They fling money around and they don't _care _about each other! They're supposed to be a family! If I was- if my uncle wasn't so- I'm not going to build myself from _that! _I'm better than that- _you're _better than that! We're smart, Jack. We're going to make the world a better place. We're going to fix things."

"Yeah," Jack nods.

They're silent for a while. Jack plays with the radio until a grungy voice begins to garble words he seems to know. (_"Let me go, boys, let me go, boys,") _Vlad hates it, but much prefers the fiddles to any string quartet.

"Hey, let's tell everyone you got punched by a thug trying to rob a chick- no, a little old lady. And that you totally put him in the hospital." Jack says, nudging him kindly. Vlad sneers.

"No one would believe that garbage about _me_." Vlad says to the window.

_("It belongs to us and them, not to any of the others,")_

"I'd believe it." Jack smiles, and then turns the radio up and begins to sing to the awful grumble rattling from his half-blown speakers. (His voice cracks like a falling oak branch.) Vlad lies back into his seat, watching strips of orange move across his lap as they pass streetlights, and listens.

* * *

AN: I debated on waiting until this chapter was completely done but I figured ya'll waited enough for it;;;; the second part is coming its just, a really long chapter OTL. I'll probably upload it as a seperate chapter and later on I'll put it into one when they story is finished.)


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